Over the past six years, media coverage of post-Katrina New Orleans has focused on the city’s piecemeal recovery from an unprecedented disaster aggravated by government mismanagement. Though much attention was directed early on at the controversy surrounding the disaster response, today news stories abound of New Orleanians’ civic loyalty and resiliency of spirit – of their unceasing efforts to restore the Big Easy to its former glory by repositioning it within the global economy. Indeed, numerous articles have recently appeared documenting the city’s recent startup boom.

Nevertheless, these stories neglect to draw the obvious but unflattering comparison between the city’s economic growth in the 19th century and its current recovery. Just as New Orleans’ former prosperity depended on its crucial role in the Atlantic slave trade, the current recovery rests upon the unacknowledged exploitation of thousands of undocumented workers.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans saw a massive influx of migrant workers (estimates run from 30,000 to 100,000) willing to take on the ambitious recovery project that its recently departed inhabitants would not. However, rather than being compensated for their efforts, the vast majority of these workers have been robbed by their erstwhile employers – many conveniently deported before payday and countless others simply denied the compensation they were promised. And yet, with little to no legal recourse on account of their undocumented status, the Latino migrant workers in New Orleans have continued seeking any available work, merely hoping that their labor will be eventually remunerated.

Apart from the issue of the legality of the employment of undocumented workers – an issue that only obscures the matter at hand – the fact remains that the post-Katrina reconstruction of New Orleans has been carried out under what can legitimately be identified as slave conditions. And this is no coincidence: it follows directly from an economic system that dictates the conditions (material, cultural, legal) under which labor is performed. Recall, for instance, the suspension of critical Department of Labor safety and workplace regulations ostensibly effected by the Bush administration in an effort to speed up the post-Katrina recovery process.

The recent startup boom in New Orleans can be traced to the lasting effects of Hurricane Katrina, but not in the way that some think. The hurricane may have leveled the playing field for venture capitalists, but its destruction has been anything but purifying. Though these first-time entrepreneurs may have ‘nothing to lose,’ the poor of New Orleans, including all those undocumented workers who literally paved the way for such business opportunities have, in truth, been left with nothing.

On October 28th, a state of emergency was declared in Canada’s First Nation community of Attawapiskat. The isolated community, located on the shores of Ontario’s James Bay, is in the throes of a serious housing crisis. Families live in dilapidated shacks and condemned buildings, without adequate heating or water. Many residents in the community of 1,800 live in tents or crowded temporary housing units that resemble shipping crates. Now that winter temperatures have set in, the situation has become dire. And the case of the Attawapiskat Nation is not unique.

Communities like the Attawapiskat Nation are allocated funds through the Canadian Federal Government. But the amount is not sufficient to maintain adequate housing in the community, and Attawapiskat has launched a plea for government aid. In response to the state of emergency, Prime Minister Stephen Harper claimed that Attawapiskat had received more than enough money to deal with the crisis, citing the amount of $90 million. How could that not have been enough to build a few extra houses? But that amount was the total funding for the community from 2006 until the present—funding meant not only for housing, but for essential services like health care and education, infrastructure, administration, and operating costs. Where non-aboriginal communities benefit from tax-funded federal infrastructure, reservations do not, and the sum of federal funds must cover what Canadians outside of aboriginal reservations take for granted.

The Canadian federal government has supplied several new housing units, and has helped to refurbish a lodge, but has withheld $1.5 million of the Attawapiskat Nation’s funding on the grounds that Attawapiskat has mismanaged funds and has not complied with accountability procedures—even though the Attawapiskat Nation has willingly undergone regular audits. The Government has agreed to allocate funds only if they are controlled by a government-appointed third-party manager who costs Attawapiskat $1,300 per day—an amount that comes out of the communities’ own coffers.

Attawapiskat’s chief, Theresa Spence, has requested that the withheld funds be released in order for the community’s essential services to continue. But the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs, John Duncan, claims that the Attawapiskat Council is refusing to release information, and is continuing to withhold the money. Though the Federal Government has accused the Attawapiskat Nation of mismanagement, the reports issued by the government’s Department of Aboriginal Affairs, which determine the allocation of funds, are conducted too irregularly to detect the actual needs of aboriginal communities. Problems with housing, sanitation and water supply often go undetected because the Department of Aboriginal Affairs does not properly apply their own monitoring systems.

It’s clear enough that the orientation of the Canadian Federal Government is an impediment to resolving the state of emergency in Attawapiskat. Some piecemeal changes, of course, could improve the situation. For example, if Canada’s current Conservative government were to cancel the corporate tax cuts proposed for 2012, this would generate 3 billion in revenue that could be used to respond not only to the Attawapiskat crisis, but to a growing national need for social housing. As things stand, the door is left open for corporate industry to pick up where the government has left off—and this would remain the case even if corporate tax cuts were to be cancelled. The diamond company, De Beers, which has a mine close to the Attawapiskat reservation, has signed land agreements with the Attawapiskat Nation, and has stepped in to fill in some of the gaps in federal funding, promising, among other things, to build a school. But De Beers’ involvement with Attawapiskat is fickle. The Attawapiskat Nation signed the agreement with De Beers for lack of resources, but De Beers has license to use Attawapiskat land in detrimental ways. De Beer’s decision to dump sewage in Attawapiskat contributed to the housing crisis, worsening already substandard conditions. This pattern—land agreements between Aboriginal groups and corporate industry—is common in Canada’s First Nations communities. Attawapiskat shows that piecemeal policy and funding changes could make a difference, but that they are not enough to change an engrained class dynamic at play not only in Attawapiskat, but across the country.

James Anaya, a United Nations special rapporteur, claimed that conditions in Attawapiskat and many First Nations communities living on reserves across Canada, are “akin to the Third World.” In a report, he wrote that non-aboriginal people in Canada have some of the best living conditions in the world, while aboriginal people “routinely face higher poverty rates and live with poorer health, less education and higher unemployment.” This disparity is a result of the centuries-long colonization of Canada’s Aboriginal communities, during which many groups were displaced by the Canadian Government in order to exploit natural resources, or ostensibly to provide communities with better services. Aboriginals were given “special” status through treaties such as the Indian Act, which grants Aboriginals nominal, tax-free independence so long as they remain on reservations. But the Indian Act also stipulates that all spending on reserves must be approved by the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, and that residents of reservations have no property rights. This entrenches many aboriginal communities in deep-seated social problems, and effectively paralyzes their attempts to resolve them. What is needed is not mere policy modification, but systemic change which will allow Aboriginal and non-Aboriginals to benefit from adequate living conditions. The funding mismanagement scandal created by the Conservative government only diverts attention away from the real issues at the center of Attawapiskat’s housing crisis—issues that go beyond the actions of the current Harper Government.

This week the Church of England’s Archbishop of York, Dr. John Sentamu and Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Rowan Williams came out in harsh critique of the finance industry, bankers, and even “unbridled capitalism” itself. Archbishop Sentamu declared opportunistic financial speculators (whose actions led to the falling share prices of top banks) to be “bank robbers and asset strippers.” Meanwhile, Williams went so far as to declare that Karl Marx was correct about the terrible power of unbridled capitalism.

In Williams’ own words:
“Marx long ago observed the way in which unbridled capitalism became a kind of mythology, ascribing reality, power and agency to things that had no life in themselves; he was right about that, if about little else.” “Ascribing independent reality to what you have in fact made yourself is a perfect definition of what the Jewish and Christian Scriptures call idolatry.”

However, the Archbishop failed to consistently advocate for real, systemic change – casting aside socialism and centralization. Instead, he merely affirmed the new UK ban on the short-selling of stocks, and critiqued the irresponsible and immoral acts of those speculators who took advantage of the latest financial crisis.

We applaud the Archbishops for their condemnation of capitalism’s excesses. Religious and ethical ideals of fairness and equity do legitimately clash with the unbridled excesses and swindling of the global finance market. However, we see the severe limitation of these sorts of critiques.

Bankers and stockbrokers are not simply morally bad; they are part of a morally bankrupt system. In fact, money does have a reality and power all its own under capitalism; it determines the way people act and make business decisions. Simply moralizing about this will not make that fact go away. Only systemic change, the overcoming of capitalism altogether – and not minor reforms or empty moral platitudes – can allow people to finally control wealth, rather than have wealth control people.

Two main positions are formed today regarding Libya after Gaddafi’s death: 1) the Libyan revolution has been coopted by NATO; 2) NATO simply performed a humanitarian mission dictated by the new and widely propagated R2P (“Responsibility to Protect”) norm. The truth of the matter is that the Libyan revolution went into crisis management mode once Gaddafi revealed the extent to which he was prepared to go in order to crush the spreading protests. At a certain point, early on in the revolution, the discontented masses of Libyans were faced with two choices: either be razed to the ground by Gaddafi’s ruthless offensive or accept outside assistance. Those who sit on the moral high horse and condemn the Libyans for accepting NATO’s assistance do not take into account the impending reality of total death which Gaddafi has shown every sign of being prepared to visit upon the revolting Libyan masses.

It goes without saying that NATO went into Libya to secure its own interests, of course. Libya, after all, is the wealthiest non-GCC Arab state in terms of GDP per capita, according to IMF 2010 numbers. It is well known that GDP per capita figures must always be used with caution, since average figures usually obscure gaping levels of inequality. Nonetheless, these figures do give some indication as to the interest of NATO to have a favorable presence in Libya, where much of this high average GDP per capita is due to Libya’s oil reserves; the largest in Africa and the eighth largest in the world.

Does this mean that the Libyan revolution was coopted? This is not the necessary outcome, seeing that revolutionary fervor is still alive and well in the Libyans, and that the NATO does not require actually to coopt the revolution (e.g., by installing a puppet regime) in order to insure its interests. In fact, the only thing that’s needed is to have a Libyan government that is capitalist in orientation and willing to establish “normal” trade relations with Western capitalist centers. Ideologically, we see nothing in what is offered by the existing Libyan tendencies (including the Islamist ones) that strays from this norm. Gaddafi, however, strayed from this norm for most of his time in office. For that, NATO felt the need to intervene.

The elections in Tunisia, the first of their kind as a result of the Arab Spring, have witnessed a great victory by Al-Nahda (alt. Ennahda), the major Islamist party in the country, who won about 41% of the seats (90 out of 217) in the constitutional assembly which, among other things, will rewrite the constitution and appoint a new president.

This should not be viewed as a surprise. Decades of authoritarian rule, direct suppression of the rising popularity of Al-Nahda (Bin Ali issued a brutal crackdown on its members after they won about a fifth of the votes in the elections of 1989), and the systematic destruction or, at least, stifling of civil society that is the trademark of all crony capitalist states in the Arabian periphery result in large sectors of the populace falling back on pre-civic organic communities. In the region, the strongest of these communities are religious in nature. This is not due to an embedded Islamic psyche which will refuse anything but the rule of an Islamist authority. It is, rather, for historical reasons having to do with the social and political developments in the Arab states that the rise of Islamism is so prevalent. This gives us the key to explain Al-Nahda’s sweeping victory.

So long as Al-Nahda doesn’t violate the rules of the representative-democratic game, its victory cannot and should not be met with objection. So far, its leaders have shown every sign not to violate those rules. People are not born with liberal democratic sympathies. It takes many decades to institute the liberal democratic sentiment as a mainstream ideology. To expect that a society that has never had properly functioning representative-democratic institutions will all of a sudden cry out in support of liberal principles once the ruling dictator is ousted is nothing short of absurd. What needs to be taken care of now is ensuring that the concrete representative-democratic institutions function without impediments. It is the gradual institutionalization of representative-democratic traditions that breeds the liberal sentiment over time. It has never been the case that a popular liberal sentiment pre-existed the deep institutionalization of representative-democratic establishments. In Europe, the process took close to 60 years from the 1789 French Revolution to the revolutions of 1848 for stable representative-democratic institutions to emerge for good on the continent, through the process of widespread gradual internal reform that followed the failed revolts of 1848. To ask the Tunisians to achieve the same results in 9 months reveals a certain brand of naïveté that is characteristic of historical myopia.